Welcome to our kitchen that truly is the heart of our home! One of life's greatest pleasures is enjoying good food with family and friends. Here you will find recipes, tips for frugal cooking, how-tos for food preservation especially canning and anything else food related. Tea is brewing and warm cookies are fresh from the oven. Please sit a spell and enjoy your stay.

Pages

I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.

Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures!

Friday, February 05, 2010

Homemade pizza is one of those family favourites I've been making since being a newlywed. Back in those days the sauce was usually tomato based and the toppings were simple. I didn't grow up with fast food and while our little village had a small restaurant I think about the only pizza you could get was frozen pizza from the grocery store. I was in my teens when a Pizza Delight opened up so was amazed at being able to order a pizza, pick-up only. Gosh did they ever have some really neat combinations! I can still remember the first time I had a Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple. It was love at first bite. They even made dessert pizzas! Unfortunately they didn't last long as the population simply wasn't big enough for them to turn a profit but they did open my eyes to the possibilities so by the time we had kids, family pizza night became quite interesting. I'd make the dough and the kids would choose how to top their own piece of pizza. Fast forward to now and thanks to the creativity and adventurous nature of our kids we have experienced some rather interesting gourmet style pizzas.

A couple of nights ago I decided to make pizza using my favourite pizza dough recipe. This dough makes a thick, deep dish style crust. I divided the dough in half to make two 12-inch pizzas. The first pizza was topped with homemade pizza sauce, ham, pepperoni, sautéed mushrooms and mozarella cheese. I decided to get a bit creative for the second pizza.

I used Sweet Baby Ray's honey barbeque sauce then topped with sautéed mushrooms, green peppers, red onions, shredded cooked turkey and mozzarella cheese. Oh now this pizza really did come out quite lovely! I must say this is one of the more unique ways I have come up with for using leftover turkey.

The ranch pizza was aptly named from the resulting flavours and the dressing used. I got the idea from a pizza we had at the kids that came with a spiral of ranch dressing on top and more ranch dressing for dipping. The Sweet Baby Ray's honey barbeque sauce added a deep, rich, slightly smoky flavour that paired nicely with the turkey. I drizzled the cut pizza slices with 3 Cheese Ranch dressing over the slices. The additional cheese layer in the ranch dressing really added to the overall flavour of the pizza. The end result was a great tasting pizza with a gourmet flavour!